


Answering the Call

by Guardian Of The Lotus (DistantStorm)



Series: Fictober 2019 [23]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, The Red War, the Farm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 19:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21141992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DistantStorm/pseuds/Guardian%20Of%20The%20Lotus
Summary: Devrim tells her to get as far away as she can, but she's never been very good at listening.Written for day 23 of the Fictober 2019 Challenge on Tumblr: "You can't give more than yourself."





	Answering the Call

The comms come to life with an angry crackle. It’s an encrypted channel, and only two people know how to access it. Everything is still dripping wet from the storm system that moved through the region earlier. Suraya Hawthorne ducks away from the smoldering fire - she’s nearly out of lighter fluid and that’s going to make things dicey if the sun doesn’t come out tomorrow to charge her solar blanket. Nights are cold, fall is nearly here.

_“Suraya!”_

She does a double take at the bark of his voice. “I’m here, old man, what’s going on?”

_“Th… ca ...tack-”_

“You’re breaking up, Dev, I can’t hear you.”

_“Damn it....”_ The line fizzles with more garbled syllables, but she puts together his message. Where is she, he wants to know.

“East. Why? Everything okay? That storm is-”

_“Get... far away as ...an.”_

Get away? The frontierswoman leans in toward the radio in earnest. “Why?”

A brief reprieve allows her to hear him in clarity. His panic is tangible. _“The Cabal have bombed the Tower. They’re laying waste to the City as we-”_

“I’m coming.” She doesn’t hesitate.

_“NO!”_

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She can’t sit here and do nothing. Everything in her screams that she has to come for him. “Are they evacuating?”

_“Vanguard hasn’t issued the order.”_

“The Militia?”

The sound of bombing runs echo loud over the comms. She’s already dousing the fire, slinging her pack over her back, pulling her hood over her head. Her eyes adjust to the darkness of the night easily.

“Dev! Come in.”

_“I’m here.”_ His voice is softer. _“They’re close.”_

“I can be to the Wall by morning. Where is-”

_“The Core has been on lockdown since the initial attack. I got a message saying that he was safe. That’s all.”_

“They have bunkers. He designed them.”

_“I know.”_ It doesn’t lessen any of the worry between them.

“He’ll be okay.”

His response takes time. She’s certain he’s trying to compose himself and it makes something icy and terrifying wrap its claws around her heart. _“I pray you’re right.”_

-/

She sees the Evac shuttles rising into the sky from Twilight Gap before dawn. The City is in flames, the Tower lost to plumes of black smoke rising eerily into the sky. The Traveler, caged and silent.

“Dev, tell me you’re on one of those things,” She says into the comms, then watches as the vast armada begins picking them off before they break through the atmosphere and cringes. Comms have been silent for hours. Better to believe he’s on one that makes it than-

_“I’m afraid not. You said you were coming,”_ He answers, sounding exhausted. She exhales, a wet sound of relief. She hears gunfire, but it subsides with a piercing echo - a sniper’s bullet ringing true. _“They evacuated forty percent of the City at most. The rest is either-”_ He pauses, and she knows. This is genocide, plain and simple.

_“They took the Light, Suraya. The Guardians are-”_

“That’s not important,” She snaps. “Get as many people together as you can. I don’t-” She looks back at the silent, looming machine in the sky and the armada that surrounds it. No one is coming for them. Someone has to do something and if everyone else has run, she guesses it’s up to her. “I’ll figure out the rest.”

-/

Devrim wraps both arms around her, breathing hot into her neck. She holds him tight for just a moment knowing - it makes her nauseous - that he hadn’t expected to live through the night. The despair, the fear is stifling, and threatens to swallow them whole long before the Cabal’s warhounds could catch them.

There are Guardians in their midst. A Hunter and Warlock who hold hands and cling to silent, unmoving Ghosts. A pair of Titans who stand between the collection of now-refugees and the alley that leads out into the City as if trying to become one with the walls themselves. 

“We’ll hold them off,” One of them, one of the Titans say. Their armor is battered, their helmets dented and dinged by gunfire. They won’t stand much more.

“It’s suicide,” Suraya responds, clicking her tongue. “Come with us.”

“Our orders are to hold the City,” The other informs her.

“The Vanguard abandoned your City,” She barks at them. She doesn’t need to see the nodding from one of the Civilians to know it’s true. Those evac shuttles are part of a protocol that means the City is lost and those left are on their own. “Don’t be a hero.” Devrim holds up his hands to stop her, wanting her to be respectful. She ignores him instead, but what she says surprises them. “We’ll have to come back for more survivors,” She looks down at the first Titan’s sidearm, held in shaking hands, and speaks reason. “And that half clip you’ve got isn’t going to do much to save us, much less yourselves.”

“It’s our duty-”

She’s not sure what makes her say it, but the words leave her lips with conviction. “Your duty is to protect.” She gestures to the crying civilians. There must be twenty of them in all. “Help me protect them, and help me get more of them out of here.”

Devrim’s eyes are on her, burning a hole in the side of her head. She wants to laugh, to tell him she doesn’t know what’s gotten into her either. But there isn’t time for that.

“Where would we even go?” The second asks, as his partner holsters his weapon and steps into the group with as much confidence as he can muster.

Hawthorne looks up at the burning, crumbling Tower, looming like an ominous beacon of death in the distance. There are other places to go. Places forgotten by time. She'd thought about it making the trek down from the mountains. “I know a place.”

-/

The Farm isn’t equipped to accommodate the number of people she brings on the first run, much less the eighteen relays that she arranges in the three days after that. By the time she’s got scouts - including Titans, Hunters, Warlocks, whomever isn’t too injured to stand, this is all hands on deck, even if she can’t stand some of the attitudes - helping her. Organizing patrols. Scavenging for resources, foraging for food. Sending out feelers for contacts long forgotten.

Dead Orbit makes their grand appearance - most of their fleet destroyed trying to escape - and begins pumping out tents, their doomsday prepping a surprising help. FWC surfaces five days after the attack, running munitions hidden in caches that rival Hawthorne’s own, scattered about the planet. They arm anyone who can carry a gun. These are difficult times.

Somehow, in a blur of doing what needs to be done, she finds herself in charge of this place and all her wary people.

The Factions defer to her. All but one, but she suspects they’ve either evacuated or hunkered down beneath their factories. The Guardians look to her for instruction. The Civilians? They need her for everything. Food, shelter, protection. 

So, she sets the schedules. Dispatches groups to run recon, assigns groups to shifts manning trails that will have to pass as refugee roads. Oversees security details. Decides to convert their largest barn into a hangar, delegates to a competent team to get the radio beacons atop the one farmhouse converted to intercept transmissions. Consults Devrim to make sure she’s got it right.

“Your instincts are good,” He tells her, one night, when they stand atop a balcony nestled between rolling hills and the lake. Tiny dots of lantern light spread out over the hillside. “But be mindful of your own needs, too. You can’t give more than yourself, Suraya. Don’t spread yourself too thin.”

She shrugs him off. If the roles were reversed, he’d do the same, too. “I’ve had worse,” She reminds him. “At least I’m comfortable with the terrain.”

It’s a fair point. They mull over it in silence. Then, Devrim asks, “What will we do?”

“Working on it.”

He looks to her in surprise. “You are?”

“We can’t hold this place forever. Not with the Cabal in the City and the Fallen out here.” She nudges him. “Especially not with people still trapped in the City.”

They share a glance. “We can’t fight a war, Suraya.” Not to mention that she’s no soldier, or that a war relief effort and fighting said war are two very different beasts.

“Not right now, no. We don’t even know what our numbers are. But any attempt to take back the City wouldn’t be fought by an army. The Wall isn’t something we can exactly storm, that’s why they built it.”

He regards her carefully. Two of a kind, they keep their cards close to their chest, but allow those around them a peek from time to time. She’s never been afraid of making a big play, either. It concerns him. “A lofty goal, don’t you think?”

“We need to bring people together. They’re scared.”

“Of course they are. Civilians don’t-”

“All of them,” Suraya revises. “I don’t…. like them,” She says of the Guardians. “I think they’re conceited, and act like they’re better than us. But right now, we’re all about the same. And we need to stick together if we’re going to have a chance.”

“So what do you have in mind?”

She raises her eyebrows. “You’ll see.”

“Don’t-”

She tugs on his sleeve, fondly. Like a child, trying to get her parent’s attention. And in a way, she is. “Family legacy’s safe for now,” She laughs at his exasperated head shake. “I promise.”

-/

A Guardian gets their Light back. Goes to join the Vanguard - or what’s left of it, Suraya can’t be sure what they’ll find - and abandons them. She’s furious, but the fight goes on. What started as mostly foot-relays, groups of Lightless Guardians and civilians being guided through the thick forests, becomes convoys. Trains of rovers cloaked by jimmy-rigged tech and ever-increasing ships looming low over the trees. 

By no means have they evacuated everyone in the City. They may never be able to do that, even if everyone who remained was willing to leave. But it’s better. Foraging is more difficult, but Suraya’s always been prepared. She has rations hidden away in her caches, they just have to be smart about it.

Suraya had always expected it to be civil war she was preparing for. A Faction War that would rend the City into pieces. Not this. Not something from- she looks up at the sky -out there.

Three days later, she receives a private transmission. From Titan.

She doesn’t want to listen to what the Vanguard Commander has to say. She does not have time for idle chit-chat with someone who is not physically here, fighting for their people.

Her message is simple, an echo of something she’s sworn Devrim has said before, some old war song mixed with some theatrical production Marc had taken her to as a child: 

“Bring them home.”

It’s not what he’s expecting to hear from a renegade, an underground leader with no formal education, no political prowess. It’s something, she’ll learn, he says himself. But that doesn’t matter now. He heeds her command, says he’ll contact her when they lay out a plan for a safe return. Afterward, Suraya wonders maybe not for the first time if these Guardians might not be so bad after all.


End file.
